Atlantic Hockey Journal: These numbers keep coming up

Here’s a hot tip for anyone looking to make a friendly
wager — for entertainment purposes only, of course — on
an Atlantic Hockey game this weekend: Pick a final score of
2-0.

Not sure what this means in the grand scheme of things in
college hockey, but twos and zeroes were wild last week.

Twelve games were on tap in the first weekend of the season when
league teams played exclusively league teams and five of them ended
up as shutouts, all with a score of 2-0.

The results do bring to mind comments Holy Cross coach Paul
Pearl (Winthrop, Mass.) made as he assessed his own team before the
season got started.

“Whether or not we can score goals is the question,”
Pearl said. “That’s the question for 58 other coaches
in the country, too. I don’t think that anyone’s
sitting here thinking they have more than enough
offense.”

Collecting pretty, highlight-film goals against teams that are
playing tough defensive schemes in front of talented goalies, he
said, is even more of an issue.

“If you’re not at the top of the crease, tipping
shots or getting rebounds, you’re probably not going to get a
lot of goals,” Pearl said.

Still, said AIC coach Gary Wright, goals come in all types, from
all angles and places.

“I think there is a big premium on trying to manufacture
goals and getting pucks to the net and crashing the net,”
Wright said. “But I don’t think you can exist, at least
in my opinion, with just those goals from tips and screens and
crashing the net. You still need a mix of not only those kinds, but
you still need a couple of guys who are more pure goal
scorers.”

The challenge to score goals in general puts more pressure on
special teams and taking advantage of power play situations as
well, Wright said.

Holy Cross, incidentally, was not involved in a shutout last
weekend. For the season thus far, the Crusaders are second in the
league at 2.6 goals in games overall.

On the flip side, AIC saw both ends of a 2-0 whitewash last
weekend at Robert Morris. The Yellow Jackets fell to Robert Morris,
2-0, on Friday night and bounced back the next night and returned
the favor behind the 33-save effort of junior goalie Ben
Meisner.

Here’s one more thing about the number two, too.

Bentley and UConn are both smack dab in the middle of the
Atlantic Hockey statistics through the first month of the season.
They each are averaging exactly two goals a game. Five teams, led
by Air Force at 3.11 and Holy Cross are averaging more than two
goals a game; five teams are averaging fewer than two goals a
game.

Game of the week

Air Force at RIT, Friday

The perennial league powers meet for the first of their three
regular-season games. They square off again in Colorado Springs for
two more on Feb. 3 and 4.

Last year, they were even over three games, each winning a
one-goal contest and tying the third 5-5. They met one last time in
the Atlantic Hockey tournament championship game and Air Force
triumphed, 1-0, despite being outshot 40-24.